Sophroni Sakharov

Sophroni Sakharov (1976)

Sophroni Sakharov (born September 22, 1896 in Moscow , † July 11, 1993 in Tolleshunt Knights , Essex ), real name Sergei Semjonowitsch Sakharov , Russian Сергей Семёнович Сахаров , was an Orthodox archimandrite and founder of a monastery. He was also known as the biographer of Starez Siluan . He was canonized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate on November 27, 2019 .

Life

Childhood and study time

Sergei Sakharov was born into a Moscow entrepreneurial family. In addition to his deeply believing Christian parents, a nanny also had an influence on him, who taught him to pray as a child. Even as a child he often prayed for a long time and spoke to his brother Nikolai about God, but also had initial doubts about the personal God of the Bible. These doubts intensified in his youth, which were characterized by a search for the absolute, which he believed he found more in Buddhism or Hinduism than in Christianity, whose personal talk of God he experienced as a limitation of the absolute. As a talented painter, he studied at the art academy (from 1915 to 1917) and then at the art school in Moscow (from 1920 to 1921). He saw art as a means to overcome the limits of visible reality. The path to the all-surpassing Absolute was only possible for him by leaving this reality.

The difficult conditions for artists in the years after the Russian Revolution prompted Sergej to emigrate to Western Europe. After a few months in Italy and Berlin , he settled in Paris in 1922 , where he became known within a few months for his painting. During this time his inner search intensified, neither art nor science could give him final satisfaction in this search. In his search for meaning he then found an answer in the words of Christ, who spoke of loving God with all your heart, with all your thoughts and with all your strength. “I suddenly realized that knowledge is an exchange in being. And the exchange in being consists primarily in an act of love, ”he said later. This opened the way to the absolute for him. He later wrote of himself that he was in a state of vision from Holy Saturday to the third day of Easter in 1924. That year he also enrolled in the Saint Serge Orthodox Theological Institute . Although the theological and philosophical elite taught there at that time, academic theology did not bring him fulfillment and he decided to become a monk.

At Athos

In 1925 he was accepted with the name Sophroni in the Russian Athos monastery Panteleimon . As a monk, he immersed himself in prayer of repentance. There he also got to know the Starez Siluan, who had a lasting influence on Sophroni and whose theology of the knowledge of God in the Holy Spirit was adopted by him. At Athos, Sophroni also dealt extensively with the Church Fathers . After the death of Starez Siluan in 1938, Sophroni retired to a hermitage. In 1941 he was ordained a priest. As a confessor he got an insight into the spiritual life of many Athos monks. During the Second World War , prayer for the whole world became very important to Sophroni. This prayer also contributed to his understanding of the person principle: "The principle of individual being is an egocentric isolation of the" I ", while the person embraces every creature in their self-sacrificing love.

Return to Paris

In 1947 Sophroni left Mount Athos for Paris. The reasons given are that he wanted to make the work of Starez Siluan known worldwide, which would hardly have been possible on Mount Athos. His poor health and the Greek civil war are cited as further motives . In Paris he wanted to be accepted again at the Institut Saint-Serge, which at that time belonged to the Russian Church Abroad . He was refused admission due to his loyalty to the Moscow Patriarchate . In 1948 he completed the book "Starez Siluan, Monk from Mount Athos". The book was published in 1952 and translated into 22 languages. The book spread the worship of Starez Siluan, and in 1987 he was canonized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate . Sophroni lived in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois , a southern suburb of Paris , in the 1950s . Many believers came there to be led by him. In 1958 a community of people who loved monastic life formed around him.

Great Britain

In 1959, Sophroni founded a monastery for Sts on an estate in Tolleshunt Knights in southern England . John the Baptist , which he directed until his death in 1993. It is characteristic of the monastery that part of the hourly prayer is replaced by the Jesus prayer . The monastery originally belonged to the Moscow Patriarchate and was in the diocese of Metropolitan Anthony von Sourozh . In 1965, with the consent of Patriarch Alexius I, the monastery went to the Ecumenical Patriarchate as a stauropegial monastery. After the publication of the book on Starez Siluan in 1952, the book His Life is Mine was published in 1977 , in which he describes his personal ascetic experience. In 1985 God followed looking for who He is . Preferred topics are the uncreated light, the knowledge of God and the teaching about the person. This, his last book, received a lot of recognition in the Orthodox world, but also in the West, but it was also criticized by some Russian theologians. In the last years of his life, Sophroni focused on conversations with his spiritual children and monks. On the day of his death, 25 monks and nuns from many different countries lived in the monastery.

plant

In addition to his books, his articles and letters are also significant. In connection with his relationship with the Roman Catholic Church , the letters to David Balfur are particularly important, as they also reveal a great deal of knowledge of Western philosophy and theology. Among other things, he addressed the various relationships between the churches and asceticism and philosophy. The quote from one of these letters became known: There are three things I cannot take in: nondogmatic faith, nonecclesiological Christianity and nonascetic Christianity. These three - the church, dogma, and asceticism - constitute one single life for me. (There are three things that I don't understand: non-dogmatic belief, non-church Christianity, and non-ascetic Christianity. These three - church, dogma and asceticism - form a single life for me.)

Web links

• Alexander Nazarenko: biography of Archimandrite Sophrony (Sacharov)

literature

• Archimandrite Sofronij: His life is mine / Archimandrite Sofronij. From the English and French into the German. transfer by Klaus Kenneth. Rework by Magdalena Meyer-Dittum . Fluhegg, Basel 2004, ISBN 3-909103-21-9 .
• Archimandrite Sophronius (ed.): Starez Siluan - Monk from Mount Athos: his life and his teaching . Patmos, Düsseldorf 2007, ISBN 978-3-491-71316-1 .
• Archimandrite Sofronij: Words of the Spirit, Words of Life: Spiritual Aphorisms . Fluhegg, Basel 2004, ISBN 3-909103-22-7 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Elder Sophrony of Essex and Elder Hieronymos of Simonopetra Officially Canonized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate; accessed on November 29, 2019
2. ^ Letter to D. Balfour, August 21, 1945